capt_oats

In fairness, his agent had his name in the papers linking him with us as soon as Alexander got his jotters. If he was happy to put himself in the frame for Motherwell I'd be surprised if he saw St Johnstone as being beneath him - especially as he didn't even make our short list and we ended up giving the job to our Academy Director who had no first team coaching or management experience.

I noticed he's not been in the squad lately. I take it he's been injured? The comments I've seen on your other forum seem to have been a bit lukewarm about the bold Baz.

xG and even more so xPts = not for everyone. I know. That said, apparently we're the most underperforming team in the league. Down 9 points on expected.

*sigh*

Full disclosure, I've entirely lifted them from the 'penalty goals' page on Transfermarkt - https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/james-mcfadden/elfmetertore/spieler/9956

I mean, just to throw this out there and like @thisGRAEME, not a nip at anyone. In terms of his penalties KVV has one more than Moult and 2 more than Higdon (albeit in fewer games). As a % 27% of his total goals scored for Motherwell have come from penalties. I agree that you need to take penalties into account for context @crazylegsjoe_mfc's example of Donnelly and O'Hara potentially being misrepresented as goalscoring midfielders is spot on but I'm not sure that dinging a striker who takes pens but whose tally isn't disproportionally skewed by by them (and it's not) gets you anywhere. As I say, I don't remember anyone piping up about Moult, Higdon or Coyne and asking how many of their goals were penalties. Kevin van Veen - 33 goals in 76 games. Penalty goals = 9 . Missed penalties = 1 (27.2% of goals scored are penalties) Michael Higdon - 43 goals in 83 games. Penalty goals = 7. Missed penalties = 2 (16.2%) Louis Moult - 51 goals in 105 games. Penalty goals = 8. Missed penalties = 1 (15.6%) John Sutton - 78 goals in 207 games. Penalty goals = 7. Missed penalties = 1 (8.9%) James McFadden - 38 goals in 110 games. Penalty goals = 4. Missed penalties = 0 (10.5%) Scott McDonald - 70 in 198 games. Penalty goals = 1. Missed penalties = 1 (1.4%) Chris Porter - 25 goals in 63 games. Penalty goals = 0. Missed penalties = 2 (0%)

Kind of a rinse and repeat of my post last week vs Livi and echoing other posters in that, irrationally, it feels unlikely that we'll keep this run of form going so we're bound to come unstuck at some point. It wouldn't be a massive surprise if this was when it happened - only losing 1 in 8 with a win rate of 75% seems like an entirely un-Motherwell thing to do. That said, you'd hope that United beating Hibs last week would serve as a reminder and make complacency less of an issue as it's felt over the past few years that we've always tended to f**k things up against teams at the bottom of the league - managing to lose 4-1 to Accies at FP and 4-1 to Killie at Rugby Park in the Covid season spring to mind.

The TV show is great. Honestly couldn't have been a better adaptation. I'm back replaying the 2nd game now and played the first through while the series was on. The games are just fucking perfect.

I suppose there's also a slight double standard there as well given that some of our more beloved players over the past 30 years were part of dressing rooms who could equally have been accused of downing tools to get shot of a manager. Without wanting to sound like a KVV Stan your point about him basically dragging us over the line last season is another thing that I've found curious when he's had questions asked of his 'attitude'. I mean, he played through that Aberdeen game with one functioning arm during Alexander's time and he was basically run into the ground by both GA and Hammell (who he also played through injury for as well). He's played the most minutes of any outfield player this season and 3rd most last season:

100%. For some folk from Day 1 they just didn't seem to like KVV's face. It's not uncommon, it happens all the time with players and managers alike - there have been some odd takes on SO about Deano and let's not even get into the general weirdness that some people have with SOD. Invariably there's little context taken into account ie: what the instructions from the manager are, whether the shape the team is playing suits them etc. Equally you've folk who still seem happy to put the boot into Robinson, McGhee or Alexander because of their perception of them. There will be multitudes of reasons for that either way it probably colours how accepting of flaws they are and in this specific case that's not really Kev's fault it's about their own expectations and what they want from him. Let's face it if you're playing #9 for Motherwell then there will be flaws and rough edges. In that respect it's no different to some of the takes doubling down on Higdon that seemed utterly wild at the time but even more so now. Similarly people were probably more forgiving of Moult because he was a personable guy that you'd have round for tea and he looked like he put a shift in. I mean, the version of Moult who arrived had Wes Fletcher playing ahead of him, the version who left had (some) Motherwell fans taking train journeys to Preston to watch him. Having said that I'm still quite surprised how close it is in terms of the rate of league goals scored: Michael Higdon - 40 in 72 = 0.55 goals per game Louis Moult (2 spells) - 39 in 91 = 0.428 GPG Kevin Van Veen - 27 in 63 = 0.428 GPG Chris Porter - 23 in 59 = 0.38 GPG John Sutton - (2 spells) - 66 in 174 = 0.37 GPG Scott McDonald (2 spells) - 66 in 191 = 0.34 GPG James McFadden (3 spells) - 37 in 112 = 0.33 GPG

On the point about McKinstry I found myself having a look at the summary of the AGM over on Ye Olde Fir Park Corner and it's a trip given what has happened since.

I mean, I'd definitely be offering McGinn something. As it stands we've Lamie, Mugabi, McGinn, Blaney and Casey plus Butcher who's listed as a midfielder. That's 6 players for 3 positions if we stick with 3 at the back which doesn't seem too many but it depends whether the likes of Bevis and the Bathgate Maldini are happy being parked on the bench. The other thing is that our current shape works largely because the wing backs we have are suited to the role they're being asked to do. The 3412 really only works if we're able to replace Johnston and Furlong. Having said that, I know the recruitment team have taken a bit of a kicking but in Penney and Furlong they seem to have sourced fairly decent LWB options so maybe it's not impossible and I suppose it's a question of whether Hammell had a decent idea of what he was looking for in that position (albeit he played them as full backs). Either way it feels like it would be mental not to stick with something that has been effective or at least run with it until it burns out but equally there's a *lot* required to fill in the gaps. I think it was @crazylegsjoe_mfc who mentioned this the other week but only 4 of our regular starting XI over the past run of games are actually contracted for next season. This is what that looks like (with contracted back ups included so it's not just 7 of 11 empty shirts): It's worth bearing in mind that 2 of the 16 contracted are currently out on loan (Maguire and Shields) while 2 effectively haven't kicked a baw for the majority of the season (Morris) or at all in McGinley's case. As a reminder here's who's OOC: O'Donnell Carroll McGinn Johnston Furlong (loan expires - contract at Brighton expires) Casey Cornelius Goss Paton Efford Aitchison McKinstry (loan expires - contract at Leeds expires) Mandron Obika (loan expires - contract at Morecambe expires)

In fairness you don't have to look particularly hard to find out that a proportion of our online support are absolute mile-oots. Anyway, in other news...I should fucking hope so: According to the article: "Motherwell have also opened talks with a number of other players who are also out of contract this summer." Which, again, isn't really a surprise.

Aye. I'd imagine if Butcher's out it'd be Lamie who'd be dropped in. I suppose a point about Lamie having been serviceable under Alexander is that for a period of that time he had competition in so much as Grezza had brought in Sol and Ojala to play his position so by implication he wasn't nailed on as a first pick. I've no idea whether that had an impact on his redemption arc or not but I suppose there's a chance complacency played a part. That said, I'd probably be inclined to think that his form under Robinson and Hammell was more down to how they were asking him to defend. I know everyone's been focussing on the Ws and KVVs goals but the fact that Kettlewell has made the sort of impact he has on the defensive side of things is low key one of the wildest parts of his - quite unexpected - Motherwell glow up. There's a caveat along the lines of "Hammell didn't get the chance to work with the players he signed in January" but even taking that into account...the chance he did get was still a complete fucking shitshow. That's before you even factor in the months of "good work" and giving the players "information" on the training ground after we'd shipped more cheap goals. To go from getting bodied out the SC 3-1 by Raith Rovers to 3 clean sheets and only 7 goals conceded in 7 games (with 4 of those coming in one game against Rangers) takes you back to @YassinMoutaouakil's point the other week of "Genuinely, wtf was Hammell doing in training?". For context in Hammell's previous 7 games before he was emptied we'd conceded 14 goals including 3 each against Rovers, Aberdeen and Hibs. I get that there's an inclination amongst some of the support to just quickly "move on" from Hammell but given SK only had like, 3 days before the St Mirren game to go from *that* under Hammell to *this* is worth talking about comparatively. Especially given we're actually playing with a bit of style and confidence - it's not just a case of us having shitfested our way to results. In the words of our award winning media team I hope lessons have been learned in terms of what the f**k actually happened and why because it's been a season that's been littered with poor choices and decisions from a club who have generally been pretty balanced when it's come to that stuff.

So...

As @Ric mentioned, he was emptied directly after the Raith game before we played you the 2nd time. So our 2-1 win was Kettlewell's first game in charge. Cheers for that.

Hammell was binned after Raith Rovers bodied us out the Scottish Cup. In the time between that and the game you won 1-0 we'd also lost 2-0 to St Johnstone and 3-1 to Aberdeen before that. You get f**k all credit for that one.

He did, aye - well, until the end of next season anyway. That seems to be our standard 1st contract for managers. Hammell signed his deal until the end of next season, Robinson's initial contract replacing McGhee was until the end of 17/18, McGhee was until the end of the 16/17 season when he replaced Bara. Alexander's wasn't announced in the press release but I'd assume that's what he got as well. Which, if true and without retreading old ground, would have meant he'd have had around 4 months remaining when he signed his extension in January last year (which tbh is an entirely reasonable point to sort that out given his form through 2021).

So...despite having lost more games we're now on the same points as last season after the same number of games. For context we were 13 points down on last season when Hammell was emptied (tables in the spoiler). What a carry on.

His name is genuinely Mark McGhee. As @Busta Nut says, it's just not that one.

Just had a swatch at his LinkedIn (assuming it's the same guy). Went to the same Uni as me, worked in finance departments at Harlequin, Leicester City, Wasps and is currently Head of Finance at Blackpool. Unfortunate name aside, that'd make him relatively qualified I guess?

Hi.

I can see Livi winning this one tbh. Kettlewell has been at pains to tell everyone all week that there's absolutely, definitely no complacency around the squad so my Motherwell brain instinctively thinks we'll switch off here - especially with Livi's fairly rotten record against us at Fir Park and the fact that another win would pretty much see us safe. It's been a while since we've been able to have nice things and everything goes to plan. That said we seem to have competition for places and injured players are coming back. So that's a bonus. I'd imagine we'll have the same XI starting as scudded Hibs, unless that dunt Spittal took keeps him out - Ketts didn't seem to mention it in his presser yesterday AFAIK, why would he though?

There's Ketts again... Interesting to hear Nick Daws' name mentioned.